Homefront 2 “5X” its Predecessor

Speaking to Gamesindustry.biz in a very interesting interview, ex-THQ president Danny Bilson chatted about Homefront and the direction the publisher is taking. In the interview he calls Homefront 2 “phenomenal” and “5X the game we delivered before when it's fully realised.”

Interestingly, this interview was conducted before the news that Bilson has been replaced by Jason Rubin, co-founder of Naughty Dog. It appears, reading the interview, that Bilson was somewhat oblivious to what was coming.

There is a worry factor here in that Bilson stated that he was very hands-on with Homefront 2. Development of the game is with Crytek after THQ shut down Kaos Studios, the original developers of Homefront, last year. With someone new at the helm, will the game suffer for it? Or will Rubin bring his excellent expertise from Naughty Dog in a way that the title will be better for it?

Said Bilson about Homefront 2:

“Homefront had fantastic creative. Arguably, at least in my opinion, one of the best properties for a first person shooter, a fresh world, great environmental storytelling and the execution unfortunately... even though I think it has some phenomenal things in that game, we sold a lot of them and it resonated with people, there were also issues around execution. Not that it wasn't good, but you're being compared to Call Of Duty and Battlefield, two of the best made games in the business. So what do you do if you're us and you've got this IP you believe in, you know you've got the fanbase, you've got a million ideas, how do you solve the problem? You go to a beloved developer that we believe can bring our execution up to the level of Call Of Duty and Battlefield with our incredible IP.

“And I'm working very closely with that team in Nottingham, it's so far phenomenal. So far. We've got a long way to go, the pre-production has been spectacular, I think it's 5X the game we delivered before when it's fully realised. And our idea was the consumers who may have been disappointed with some of the aspect of Homefront, with Crytek applied to it, it gives them confidence in the execution with a brand that seems to have a lot of appeal.”